Epidemiology Faculty Awarded Centers for Disease Control Funding for COVID-19 Study
Congratulations to Drs. Karim Khader, Research Assistant Professor, and Yue Zhang, Research Associate Professor, from the Division of Epidemiology! Their study, “Understanding Multi-drug Resistant Organisms among Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19 in VA” has been awarded funding by the Centers for Disease Control. Dr. Khader serves as Principal Investigator, and Dr. Zhang is Co-Principal Investigator.
This 2-year study seeks to leverage a large volume of clinical data from the VA’s national electronic medical record to generate high-quality epidemiological evidence surrounding the role of multi-drug resistant organisms (MDRO) in COVID-19 disease, including frequency, predictive factors and patient outcomes associated with co-infection. The findings from this work will advance our understanding of the epidemiological patterns of MDRO co-infection in patients hospitalized with COVID-19, and shed light into the pathogenesis and clinical relevance of MDRO co-infection to clinical outcomes among hospitalized COVID-19 patients. In addition to Drs. Khader and Zhang, the study’s investigator team also includes Drs. Barbara Jones (Assistant Professor, Pulmonary) and Michael Rubin (Professor, Epidemiology).